Regarding Stu
by Silencio1
Summary: In the aftermath of a great loss, Tommy goes to the park and reflects. Friendship arrives from an unlikely but welcome source.


Disclaimer: It is not mine and never will be.

There is some difference of dates and years here that shall be explained afterwards. See author's note at the end for further clarification.

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Regarding Stu

_August 22, 2016. _

It was a beautiful August day, bright and warm. After a whole week of rain it was almost unnerving for Tommy to see so much sunshine. He had begun to think that the sun would never come out and now here it was, bright and sunny and so impossibly cheery that it almost hurt to look around and see its effects on the neighborhood.

Yet as he settled into an old swing, he found himself doing just that. His old neighborhood park was falling apart, had been doing so for years, and he found himself, though he hadn't bothered to view anything in the park in years, curiously scanning the creaky old swings and rusted monkey bars with tired, sad eyes. Years ago, he and his friends had played here when it was all bright and shiny and new. Now it was old and destroyed, just days away from being plowed away to make room for an apartment complex. Where had the years gone?

The swing squeaked as he moved his feet, gaining momentum as he did so. He used to challenge Phil and Lil to contests on these swings, to see who could swing higher and then jump off farthest. Chuckie had never wanted to participate, he was always wary about getting hurt.

At the thought of Chuckie, Tommy's heart clenched. Chuckie had been dead for almost two years now, and yet it still never stopped hurting to think of him. His freckled face would invariably appear in Tommy's mind any time the young man was prepared to do something stupid, like drink way more than he should at the bar or even worse, try to get behind the wheel of a car afterwards. He only stopped because it's what Chuckie would want him to do and he owed him that, at least in his absence.

Tommy thought of him now as he swung higher and higher, the chains creaking in protest as his legs continued their climb towards the sky. When he was younger, though he was the smallest, he always won this game. Who could swing the farthest, jump the highest, reach the sky fastest…Tommy was the bravest, he always dared to do what the other's could not, what they would not do.

As the swing moved back and forth he found his thoughts wandering over the past few nightmarish days since his father had died. There had been nothing but the hectic planning of funeral arrangements and phone calls, of people coming over or calling to offer their condolences. As though any condolences could make up for what had been lost. Tommy had left as soon as the funeral was over, unable to take it anymore.

He had shut his cell phone off. He knew that his little brother Dil was looking for him and his mother as well and a part of him felt bad for ignoring them. They were hurting just like him and yet he needed this time alone. This park, just like his father and Chuckie, would be gone soon and he needed to say goodbye.

Dil, who hadn't of been born until Tommy was eight years old, had never really shared this with him. By the time Dil was old enough to be walking and talking Tommy had been getting ready for middle school and anticipating being a teenager. The two brothers loved each other but eight years apart was still eight years apart and Dil had not known the same things that Tommy had. Things such as this park when it was brand new and shiny, their old dog Spike back when he was young and playful, Grandpa Lou, who had died the year before Dil was even born and so much more had been Tommy's alone to remember.

Chuckie would have known it all; he would have hated to see that the slide he had first conquered his fear of was old and rusted and about to be destroyed. But Chuckie wasn't here and neither was Grandpa, who had taken them to the park so many times only to fall asleep while they played; their imaginations awhirl with any number of adventures.

He remembered when Dil was born, and his father had said sadly that Dil would never know Grandpa, that he had died too soon. He thought of how if he ever married, his children wouldn't ever know his father, that they would never play with any of his inventions. It was another somber reminder of just what he had lost.

Tommy's shoes dragged into the ground. They had once had an Olympics in the park against the McNulty brothers, him and Chuckie and Phil and Lil, with Angelica ordering them around and fussing and generally being her usual tyrannical self. "What had it all been for? The McNulty's could have won that stupid Olympics for all the good it did them."

"Over my dead body they could have."

Tommy whirled around in his swing. Angelica it seemed had also gone to look for him. She was still dressed in her black mourning, her long black dress and shoes looking strange on the young woman who usually favored bright purples, oranges and blues. Right now she was regarding him with a very annoyed look, arms crossed in place as he stared blankly back.

"So is there a reason you decided to go hide out in the park like a five year old instead of answering the phone and letting someone know where you were like an adult?"

"Were you all looking for me?" Tommy asked her.

She glared at him. "Oh no, only Dil, Phil, Lil, your mom, my dad, and of course me," she told him angrily, "that's all." Angelica stepped closer to him, her arms still crossed. "So do you care to tell me why you decided to disappear and give Aunt Didi a panic attack?"

For a moment Tommy didn't answer her. He twisted his hands around the rusted chains, hearing them creak in protest. "They're going to tear down this park, starting tomorrow." He finally said. It wasn't much of an answer, much less one that should make any sense, but somehow it seemed like the thing to say. "It's going to be torn down and an apartment complex is going to be built here."

Angelica was silent for a moment as though processing this. Just as Tommy thought she was going to yell at him or say something nasty, she surprised him. Instead all she had to say was: "I know."

He nodded at her. Then maybe she understood. "It was brand new when we were kids," he continued, feeling encouraged. "We used to come here all the time before Dil was born, after school. I learned how to ride a bike here."

"We all did," Angelica told him. To his further surprise she stepped over and sat down in the worn out swing beside him. "And we had the Olympics against the McNulty's." She smiled at the memory.

"I remember that," Tommy said with a smile of his own. "You spent every day after school drilling us on that. You kept saying that there was no way that Timmy McNulty was going to beat you. You had to be the first nine year old to hold her own Olympics."

Angelica laughed. She then began to swing her legs, the swing creaking as it began to move. Tommy joined in, his own groaning out its age as well. "We got away with a lot when we were younger, didn't we?"

"That's because Grandpa was usually watching us," Angelica told him as she began to swing harder. "He would usually just fall asleep and then we had the run of your house or the park."

"Then you had the chance to bully us," Tommy told her. "You never missed an opportunity to do that."

She came to a grinding halt, frowning and Tommy followed suit a moment later. Angelica regarded him with a somewhat annoyed look. "I was always just playing around," she told him. "You all knew that."

"Sometimes," Tommy dug one of his shoes into the dirt, concentrating on the earth instead of on her. "You had a lot of fun bothering us I think."

"Like when?" Angelica asked him.

"How about the time you told me the sky was falling?"

Angelica shook her head. "It's not my fault you believed that."

"I was three and a half," Tommy argued back. "Of course I believed it. Or the time you told us that you had an invisible sister so you could get more things?"

Angelica shook her head again, but she was starting to smile. "You believed it, not me."

Tommy smiled back. "Yeah, I guess. You usually got in trouble for those things, at any rate, like when you had to clean up the kitchen after we all flooded it." At her look of annoyance, Tommy laughed and after a moment Angelica joined in.

"That's not even the worst of it," she admitted through laughter. "I once convinced you guys that we had to get everything out of the house for a garage sale and a lot of stuff got sold for practically nothing. Uncle Stu was angry for weeks, he just kept muttering about all of the stuff he lost."

Tommy looked at her in confusion. "I don't remember that, one" he admitted.

"Of course not," Angelica said, "you were what, two? Chuckie would have remembered it, he was older and he was largely the one who had to help me get the heavy stuff out of the house with your father's invention."

At the mention of Chuckie, they both sobered. It was a sore point for them. Angelica had become close to Chuckie as they got older, close enough to even start dating him. His death had hit her as hard as it had hit Tommy. They had both only started to really heal this past year and that's when Tommy's father had…but that hurt to think of too.

"We were monsters," Tommy decided then, breaking the silence. "You especially though," he then couldn't resist adding.

"I can't even argue with that," Angelica told him. She sighed. "Are you going to come back to the house?" She asked him. "Or at least call Aunt Didi and let her know you're okay?"

"I don't want to leave just yet," Tommy told her softly. He turned to regard the park around him, the worn out benches and rusted, paint-chipped playground equipment and the overlong, weedy grass. He felt an indescribable longing well up in him, a desire to go back to when things were simpler, when his grandfather was still alive and telling farfetched stories. A time when he and Chuckie believed that Reptar was real and the scariest things were slides and monsters lurking underneath new beds.

From beside him he could see that Angelica had pulled out her phone and was texting away, probably telling Dil and the others that he was found. He decided that he didn't care very much. He went back to inspecting the broken down park. Even the ducks seemed to have abandoned the playground, he remembered dozens of them being there when he was a child but now there wasn't even one in sight.

"We searched the sand for nickels once." Angelica had gotten off the phone it seemed. She pointed over to a jungle gym not ten feet away. "In the sand over there. We found one nickel and thought we would find a whole bunch of nickels and then we would all be rich."

"I think I remember," Tommy said. He wished every memory didn't have to be filled with so much pain. "I remember Grandpa's hair once turning orange while we were at the park, but I don't remember why."

"It's because he tried to dye it black," Angelica told him. "Chuckie did too and their hair turned orange-red in the sun. Uncle Stu and Aunt Didi were so mad about it."

Tommy laughed again, harder than ever. He remembered Grandpa with his bright orange hair and he remembered other strange things, Chuckie telling him about a dream he had once had about Spike drinking tea and Angelica's old cat Fluffy with pigtails like Angelica's and he just laughed. And then suddenly the tears came, unexpectedly and unwanted and he couldn't stop them, couldn't even begin to know how to stop the sudden flow, he only knew that he had only cried when he had first heard that his father died in the emergency room. After those first bitter tears he had closed up and simply left his mother and Dil to cry and he hadn't cried again over the past few days, not at the wake or the funeral, not once.

"I miss them too, you know." Angelica's voice was unusually soft. She had shifted in her seat to look at him and he turned his face away.

What could he say to that? He just kept crying, the tears flowing as they hadn't since the winter before last when Chuckie had died. He didn't want to keep losing people; he didn't want to keep feeling this pain.

She was staring at him, he could feel her eyes on the side of his face, and he turned so that she was at his back only for her to snap at him. "Don't turn away from me Tommy! I'm unhappy too."

He still didn't say anything, rather he kept crying, the tears flowing as he twisted in his swing. All of the misery of the past few days kept pouring out as they sat there, one crying and miserable, the other quiet and uncomfortable. Angelica regarded him closely for a few moments, an unreadable look on her face. Then she said quietly: "I bet I can swing higher than you."

This finally got a reaction out of him. Tommy turned to look at her in shock, his eyes still wet and red. "Really, that's all you have to say?"

"Yes," Angelica told him firmly, with no longer a trace of discomfort on her pale face. "I can swing higher than you. I could when we were kids and I can now."

Tommy glared at her. "You can't," he told her. He couldn't believe she was trying to pick a fight with him now. Why now?

"Oh, I can," she told him. "Watch." She began to swing then, moving her long legs back and forth. Tommy, after a moment's hesitation, followed. The swings creaked horribly, but neither one let up. Higher and higher they swung, their legs kicking out in front of them, reaching out towards the bright blue sky above them.

There was a crack then and Angelica went flying, her and the broken swing falling down into the grass and Tommy jumped off landing less than a foot away from where she fell. Heart racing, he quickly got up and went to her side.

To his surprise Angelica smiled up at him. "I landed farther than you," she told him smugly from her place on the ground. She was cradling her left arm from where she had landed on it and her dress was torn but she was smiling and Tommy couldn't help but laugh again. His eyes were still red, but he could feel his spirits lifting, had perhaps felt them lifting since she had first shown up at the park.

"Always starting competitions and getting me in trouble," he told her as he settled down on the grass next to her. They both rested their heads on the overgrown grass, looking up at the blue sky and the wispy white clouds that occasionally passed by. For a few minutes there was nothing but a companionable silence.

"I never liked cloud-watching," Angelica finally said. "It's much too boring; I always liked an activity that kept me busy." She sighed. "Sometimes that was bothering you guys I admit, but then I was perhaps a bit of a brat as a kid."

"A bit of one yeah," Tommy agreed. "You were not much of a good friend when we were younger."

"We didn't have to be friends," Angelica told him softly. "We are cousins and cousins don't always have to be friends."

He laughed. "That's true," he told her. Yet for perhaps the first time in his life he considered her a friend first and a cousin second. "We are friends now though," he said after a moment. He meant it. The two of them shared things that very few others understood, like Chuckie. Only Phil and Lil could come close, but they had each other.

It was quiet for a few moments, and then Angelica shot up.

"Last one to the monkey bars is a rotten egg." With that she was off and he found himself following her. What they would look like to anyone who might pass by as they chased each other over the monkey bars and slides, both of them over twenty-five and clad in black dress clothes, he did not know and he did not care. They ran and laughed, one catching the other, the other then running off in the other direction, occasionally taking tumbles into the grass.

They played on the swings, the monkey bars, the slide, the bike path. Anywhere and everywhere they had run and laughed and played as children and as they played memories of back when came racing back, both sad and joyous. Memories of Grandpa Lou and Stu and Chuckie and even Spike running through their minds.

For that last day they were kids, no responsibilities, no deaths, no grief; just two silly kids running and playing on a doomed playground. For that very last day they were Rugrats.

End

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Authors note: So I found myself watching the show again and wondering: what if everything that happened in the show corresponded with real life dates and events? In short: Dil was born in 1998 because that's when the character was created, Grandpa Lou died in 1997 because that's when his original voice actor died and Chuckie and Stu died in 2014 and 2016 because that is when their voice actors died.

I imagine that would be a lot less happy but then growing up is often unhappy and one has to take the bad mixed in with the good. Who better than Tommy and Angelica, who along with Chuckie and to a lesser extent Phil and Lil were the most prominent of the Rugrats? This is technically a one shot for now but if the inspiration strikes me I might write more detailing what everyone is up to and the reactions to the deaths of characters like Chuckie and Stu. Let me know what you all think.


End file.
